A BOMBSHELL COURT RULING CURTAILS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

IT HAS BEEN ALMOST 47 YEARS SINCE a black man named Heman Sweatt and his lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, brought a case before the Supreme Court that forcibly integrated the University of Texas. So it was oddly appropriate last week that the University of Texas at Austin was once again the defendant in a sweeping, precedent-setting court ruling on the subject of race. This time, though, the university was chastised for promoting racial diversity, not racial exclusion.

In blunt and remarkably plain language, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared that the University of Texas law school could not use different...